NEW YORK– As with the Milan Furniture Fair and other trendy design fairs worldwide green and recycled design is high on the menu. Designers are realizing that food packaging has considerable carbon footprint and are fashioning their own solutions. And this year’s New York Design Week was no different.

Witness Portuguese design group Studio Veríssimo’s debut of this beautifully clever eco chandelier that gives a ray of hope for discarded plastic coffee sticks.

It created quite a stir at NYDW.

photo: inhabitat

THE ORIENT– For centuries it has been the custom for Asian families to give a new bride a Kombucha culture as a wedding gift (Confucious say, “husband not likely to offend strong wife”). This was nurtured throughout her marriage and then passed on to her own daughter. Today it is one of the hottest health drinks for celebutantes, and other would-be-beautiful people. Although a daily sip of kombucha may improve your most beautiful assets it will most certainly put a pinch on your other assets. So, if you are a devotee or simply curious why not DIY and save some cold hard dinero?

It may seem rather complicated at the get go, but once you understand the no metal rule: spoons, bowls… and preparing the tea in a sterile environment it is relatively e-z.

Baby, if you can boil water, you can make Kombucha!

Difficulty: E-Z
Time Required: 6-15 days

INGREDIENTS

3 quarts of purified water
1 cup white sugar
1 Kombucha culture**
4-5 tea (high quality) bags of black tea

• four-qt. cooker
• non-metallic spoon
• teaspoon
• measuring cup
• one gallon glass jar

MAKE

1. Wash all utensils with hot sudsy water and rinse well.
2. Boil three quarts of purified water.
3. Add 1 cup white sugar to water when a rolling boil is reached. Boil water and sugar for five minutes.
4. Turn off heat and add 4-5 tea bags of black tea.
5. Steep 10-15 minutes and remove tea leaves or bags and let tea cool (it doesn’t hurt to steep the tea longer).
6. Pour cooled tea into gallon size glass container.
7. Add your Kombucha culture placing it so that the smooth shiny surface lies up. Add 1 cup of fermented Kombucha Tea from a previous batch (or substitute 1/4 c. distilled vinegar).
8. Place cheesecloth over the opening of the jar and secure with a rubber band. This keeps dust, mold, spores and vinegar flies out of the fermenting tea.
9. Allow to sit undisturbed in a well ventilated and darkened place away from direct sunlight (temp. 65-90 degrees F.) for 6 – 15 days.
10. To make sure the tea is ready to harvest, pour off a couple of ounces for a taste test.
11. Taste Test: A taste test on a batch of Kombucha Tea may taste like this: 4-6 Days – Too sweet, not all sugar converted. 7-9 Days – Tastes like sparkling apple cider. 10+ Days – Vinegar taste becoming prominent.
12. When the tea is brewed to your taste, remove the two cultures.
13. Gently separate and place the cultures in a glass bowl covered with plastic wrap or a plastic container and refrigerate. They will keep refrigerated for approximately six months, possibly longer.
14. Pour the fermented tea through a coffee filter and bottle it into glass or food-grade plastic quart bottles.
15. Date and label the bottled tea and put it in the refrigerator.

TIPS

1. 1/4 cup white distilled vinegar can be substituted for the fermented tea starter.
2. One of the four tea bags can be substituted with an herbal blend for variety.
3. Sometimes the culture floats on the surface, sometimes it sinks to the bottom of the liquid. Either way is okay. When the culture sinks to the bottom a new culture (baby) will begin to grow on the surface of the tea.

**Find Kombucha cultures at:

Better Health Stores
kombucha2000.com
kombucha exchange

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BUZZING EVERYWHERE– Since plants feel pain – they may also feel joy, but how would you know aside from the occasional bloom? That is the job of Junyi Heo’s Pet Plant. The whimsical pot measures soil conditions, temperature, humidity, and water – calculates those variables based on the need of said plant, and expresses its condition via a series of emoticons & pictograms on an LCD display.

It’s also smart enough to know if you’ve over watered and will systematically drain itself into a water vessel. A simple USB interface does double duty by charging and transmitting information to and from your computer.

source: yanko

NEW YORK– Metropolis Magazine hosted a unique humanitarian-focused design conference at this year’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair. On Monday, Metropolis presented Design Entrepreneurs: Make Good and Prosper. With a focus on political, social and personal aspects of design, the event stimulated future forward ideas towards a more sustainable world. The conference explored the many and varied ways that successful business ventures can be good for the environment and society.

(PICTURED) Lifestraw for a couple of dollars automagically turns bacteria-laced toxic waters into safe drinking water.

ROME– The FAO summit this week to discuss the growing global food crisis has determined that several issues are contributing to the problem:

CAUSES

1. increased food demand throughout Asia and Southeast Asia
2. droughts in Australia, Spain, Africa, California and other places
3. ecologically fragile land in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Malawi and other places
4. decline in government agricultural investment = drop in output/productivity. World agricultural output was more productive 50 years ago than today
5. speculators in agricultural & crude commodities driving up wheat, rice, soybean, corn and others
6. water table declines in China, California and other places

In what has become an alarming trend is the rise of global speculators like sharks circling commodity markets and forcing up food prices. After the worldwide subprime meltdown International speculators have re-orientated their portfolios looking for investment opportunities in commodities; thus meteorically forcing food and crude futures un-sustainably upwards.

This has become the age of global “greed and speculation”.

NEED

1. improved transport infrastructures worldwide
2. logistic transport networks
3. increased role for science & technology (development)
4. better farmer training
5. better water resource management & planning
6. increased global market restrictions on speculative commodity traders

ROME– Today the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization hosts a summit on food security amid global protests over rising prices. But the presence of Chinese-backed-dictator, Robert Mugabe (right, green sash), has caused protests as other delegates call his presence ‘obscene’.

Zimbabwe is experiencing 2,000% inflation and severe food shortages due to Mugabe’s widely considered corrupt leadership of that Southern African country.

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said it was “obscene” that the man “who has presided over the starvation of his people” would be attending the three-day conference.

“Robert Mugabe turning up to a conference dealing with food security or food issues is, in my view, frankly, obscene,” Smith told reporters in Perth.

“President Mugabe is personally responsible for the absurdly high food prices and grinding poverty in Zimbabwe,” Bert Koenders, the Dutch minister for overseas development, said in a statement.

His ministry said Dutch delegates would take part in the conference, despite their objection to Mugabe’s attendance.

“We will not allow the millions of people who can’t afford a proper meal to be held hostage by President Mugabe,” Koenders said. “We will ignore him and do all we can to tackle the food crisis with concrete measures.”

Mugabe was staying at a posh Rome hotel on Via Veneto a day before the start of the summit. He did not respond to reporters’ shouted questions as he left the hotel Monday afternoon.

Mugabe normally is subject to European Union travel restrictions that prevent him and more than 100 other political figures in Zimbabwe from setting foot in on EU territory.

The travel restrictions, along with other sanctions, were imposed by the EU in 2002 because of Zimbabwe’s poor record on human rights and renewed in 2007.

However, the sanctions do not apply for the United Nations, a Food and Agriculture Organization spokesman said.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stayed home in protest.

Brown said Britain’s international development secretary, Douglas Alexander, would attend the food summit in Rome but would not greet Mugabe or hold talks with him.

“We think it’s particularly unfortunate that he’s decided to attend this meeting, given what he’s done in relation to contributing difficulties on food supply in Zimbabwe,” government spokesman Michael Ellam said in London.

source: cnn

WORLDWIDE– Speculators and mega investors are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into booming financial markets for commodities like wheat, corn and soybeans helping to send food prices skyward.

Additionally, a few big private investors are betting that that the world’s need for food will greatly increase — by buying farmland, fertilizer, grain elevators and shipping equipment.

One has bought several ethanol plants, Canadian farmland and enough storage space in the Midwest to hold millions of bushels of grain.

Another is buying more than five dozen grain elevators, nearly that many fertilizer distribution outlets and a fleet of barges and ships.

And three institutional investors, including the giant BlackRock fund group in New York, are separately planning to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in agriculture, chiefly farmland, from sub-Saharan Africa to the English countryside.

“It’s going on big time,” said Brad Cole, president of Cole Partners Asset Management in Chicago, which runs a fund of hedge funds focused on natural resources. “There is considerable interest in what we call ‘owning structure’ — like United States farmland, Argentine farmland, English farmland — wherever the profit picture is improving.”

But storm clouds are gathering. Some traditional players in the farm economy, and others who study and shape agriculture policy, say they are concerned these newcomers will focus on profits above all else, and not share the industry’s commitment to farming through good times and bad.

“Farmland can be a bubble just like Florida real estate,” said Jeffrey Hainline, president of Advance Trading, a 28-year-old commodity brokerage firm and consulting service in Bloomington, Ill. “The cycle of getting in and out would be very volatile and disruptive.”

By owning land and other parts of the agricultural business, these new investors are freed from rules aimed at curbing the number of speculative bets that they and other financial investors can make in commodity markets. “I just wonder if they need some sheep’s clothing to put on,” Mr. Hainline said.

Mark Lapolla, an adviser to institutional investors, is also a bit wary of the potential disruption this new money could cause. “It is important to ask whether these financial investors want to actually operate the means of production — or simply want to have a direct link into the physical supply of commodities and thereby reduce the risk of their speculation,” he said.

Grain elevators, especially, could give these investors new ways to make money, because they can buy or sell the actual bushels of corn or soybeans, rather than buying and selling financial derivatives that are linked to those commodities.

When crop prices are climbing, holding inventory for future sale can yield higher profits than selling to meet current demand, for example. As is the case with OPEC and current gas prices.

“It’s a huge disadvantage to not be able to trade the physical commodity,” said Andrew J. Redleaf, founder of Whitebox Advisors, a hedge fund management firm in Minneapolis.

Mr. Redleaf bought several large grain elevator complexes from ConAgra and Cargill last year for a long-term stake in what he sees as a high-growth business. The elevators can store 36 million bushels of grain.

“We discovered that our lease customers, major food company types, are really happy to see us, because they are apt to see Cargill and ConAgra as competitors,” he said.

The executives making such bets say that fears about their new role are unfounded, and that their investments will be a plus for farming and, ultimately, for consumers.

“The world is asking for more food, more energy. You see a huge demand,” said Axel Hinsch, chief executive of Calyx Agro, a division of the giant Louis Dreyfus Commodities, which is buying tens of thousands of acres of cropland in Brazil with the backing of big institutional investors, including AIG Investments.

“What this new investment will buy is more technology,” Mr. Hinsch said. “We will be helping to accelerate the development of infrastructure, and the consumer will benefit because there will be more supply.”

Financial investors also can provide grain elevator operators the money they need to weather today’s more volatile commodity markets. When wild swings in prices become common, as they are now, elevator operators have to put up more cash to lock in future prices. John Duryea, co-portfolio manager of the Ospraie Special Opportunity Fund, is buying 66 grain elevators with a total capacity of 110 million bushels from ConAgra for $2.1 billion. The deal, expected to close by the end of June, also will give Ospraie a stake in 57 fertilizer distribution centers and the barges and ships necessary to keep them supplied with low-cost imports.

Maintaining these essential services “helps bring costs down to the farmers,” Mr. Duryea said. “That has to help mitigate the price increases for crops.”

Mr. Duryea of the Ospraie fund dismissed the idea that financial investors, with obligations to suppliers and customers of their elevators and fertilizer services, would put their thumb on the supply-demand scale by holding back inventory to move prices artificially.

“It is not in our best interests for anyone to be negatively affected by what we do,” he said.

photo: justin mot
source: nytimes

This simple recipe makes a tasty party snack. Use your favorite nuts, and add a bit of heat with a dash of ground red pepper, if you like.

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 teaspoons brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons honey (or agave)
1 teaspoon canola oil
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
Dash of freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup blanched almonds
1/4 cup cashews
1/4 cup hazelnuts

MAKE

1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. Combine the first 8 ingredients in a microwave-safe bowl.
3. Microwave at HIGH for 30 seconds; stir until blended.
4. Add nuts to sugar mixture; toss to coat.
5. Spread nuts evenly on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
6. Bake at 350° for 15 minutes or until golden brown.
7. Cool.

Yield

12 servings (serving size: 1 tablespoon)

NUTRITIONALS

CALORIES 60(75% from fat); FAT 5g (sat 0.5g,mono 3.3g,poly 0.9g); PROTEIN 1.5g; CHOLESTEROL 0.0mg; CALCIUM 14mg; SODIUM 44mg; FIBER 0.8g; IRON 0.5mg; CARBOHYDRATE 3.4g

photo: becky luigart-stayner; styling: Jan Gautro
recipe: julianna grimes, cooking light

FLORIDA– Oranges are everywhere: in the juice, at the Orange Bowl, on the state’s license plates, and now juicing the mailboxes of Super Delegates and Democratic Rules Committee members.

In an attempt to convince the Democratic Kingmakers to seat the full Florida delegation – after they were stripped months ago of their privileges – oranges are being sent to these influential decision makers to lobby, cajole or harass them into seating Florida at this year’s Democratic National Convention in Colorado.

Many committee members complain of receiving boxes of oranges and being flooded with calls and emails demanding that Florida be seated.

Floridians may soon get their wish. The Rules committee meets Saturday to decide.

CHICAGO– After lobbying a passionate campaign Hydrox fans have forced Kellogg to resurrect the 100-year-old Hydrox cookie in response to a consumer campaign that involved more than 1,300 phone calls, 1,000 petition signatures and “countless online message board postings.” Kellogg is making Hydrox available nationally, but its duration on the shelf depends on consumer demand and actual retail sales.

Hydrox cookies were pulled in 2003. The product had difficulty competing with the even more iconic Oreo, made by Kraft. The company decided to bring the cookie back because of consumers’ insistence and as a commemoration of the brand’s anniversary. Kellogg has created a website, HydroxCookies.com, where consumers are invited to share their stories about the brand. Writers on the site will have a chance to win a trip to New York City for a milk-and-cookies celebration, where they will be among the first to taste the products in a long time.

Don’t you just love it when it all comes together like this? No more fumbling with cumbersome notepads, smart phones, or foggy memory, just jot it down and VOILA!

$3.45 USD
amazon.com

U.K.– Mobile coffee carts have been around for a while, in both Turkey and India tea vendors sell their product from units strapped to their body like backpacks. And chaat can be bought from vendors in colorful bike mounted stalls throughout India. But such carts are fairly new to western Europe that is until now UK-based Bikecaffe has come up with a pedal-powered coffee shop.

Using heavy-duty cargo tricycles, Bikecaffe serves up a range of coffee blends from roasters Segafredo Zanetti and Integrity Fair Trade. The company’s trikes use a gas-powered machine for brewing and can produce up to 500 cups per day—served in recyclable containers—along with chai, biscotti and other edibles. Best of all, Bikecaffe trikes can access pedestrian areas that their motorised competitors can’t, making them ideal providers for pedestrian malls, historic venues, outdoor events, concerts and parties.

Just launched in March, Bikecaffe is recruiting franchisees to run carts across the UK and Europe; one to bring to your neck of the coffee-drinking woods?

Or perhaps build you own – who’s to stop you?

source: springwise